Inferior releases.

[DharmaFreedom]

9 hours ago, Narcosis said:

That's why fan TL's should revert to translating demos once again, like in the past. It not only does not harm the developers (aside from those, who might get salty over fans cracking their in-house engines), but helps promote the product to a wider audience. It's always a win-win situation for both parties and most wouldn't even mind to see their demos/trial versions translated. In fact, they are probably hoping to see big numbers on their downloads.

I doubt a lot of people would have the time to play random demo's of games that, may or may not, get released in a few years. I think most people play demo's of games knowing that the game would eventually get released, to get a taste and see if it's worth purchasing. It'll suck if you play a fan tl demo of say dies irae, loving it but the game ends up not being popular and developers end up losing interest because of results of that very demo .

Personally things seem fine with fan tls now, they bring awareness to games and could potentially get purchased by companies like mangagamer or sekai. The possibility seems pretty good now, I already assume that projects like clover days, lover able, majo koi nikki, tsui yuri etc would end up getting picked up, maybe they already have . 

I wouldn't have been aware of those games if fan tl's didn't introduce them [oh like dracu riot and sakusaku 2] , i certainly wouldn't play a demo of those games if i wasn't sure they'll be out eventually. I think people [developers, fans]  do a good job promoting already, they have those conventions , sites like this, steam, vndb, social media etc. 

 

Edited October 27, 2017 by DharmaFreedom

[ChaosRaven]

The overall consensus of the effect of already existing fan translations on new releases is that it depends on the quality of the VN. Popular VN's can highly profit from already established fan bases through fan translation like countless examples prove (MuvLuv, Grisaia, Stein's Gate, etc.), while unpopular VN's can definitely suffer from existing fan translations.

I consider that a very positive effect, since it motivates English publishers to go for actual quality and not try to sell us overpriced rubbish.

I think the only case I know of where a popular VN with an existing fan translation at least initially sold badly was ef - A fairy Tale of the Two. Though I'm still not convinced that the fan translation was really the reason for that. Other highly rated VN's like Kara no Shojo had a pretty bad start too. Story VN's and utsuges in particular just weren't that popular in the earlier times of VN ports.

Nowadays its probably 10 official releases on 1 fan translation, so I think the effect of fan translations on the general VN market is absolutely minimal now.

[novurdim]

1 hour ago, ChaosRaven said:

Popular VN's can highly profit from already established fan bases through fan translation like countless examples prove (MuvLuv, Grisaia, Stein's Gate, etc.), while unpopular VN's can definitely suffer from existing fan translations.

I consider that a very positive effect, since it motivates English publishers to go for actual quality and not try to sell us overpriced rubbish.

It kinda irks me how the logical conclusion of this thought chain is that popularity = quality.

[ittaku]

17 minutes ago, novurdim said:

It kinda irks me how the logical conclusion of this thought chain is that popularity = quality.

A fair observation since usually popularity is proportional to titillation.

[Darklord Rooke]

23 hours ago, Decay said:

Incidentally, JAST is releasing another game next week. (Princess X)

Not Outlaw Django?  

[Infernoplex]

Speaking of JAST ... My vague memory from earlier this year tells me they promised Flowers Summer (forgot the full name of Flowers sequel) by the end of this year or something like that, right? What happened with that? xD

[Decay]

2 hours ago, Infernoplex said:

Speaking of JAST ... My vague memory from earlier this year tells me they promised Flowers Summer (forgot the full name of Flowers sequel) by the end of this year or something like that, right? What happened with that? xD

The year's still not over! The claim was Eiyuu Senki in Summer, Princess X in Fall, Flowers in Winter, and Katahane early next year. JAST is actually releasing Princess X in fall like they claimed, so who knows. Maybe we'll see a December Flowers release or something.

[Xilium]

As far as the Eiyuu Senki situation, the bigger surprise to me was that they didn't just go with the Gold edition of the game. That way, they could have benefited from having a recognizable name among the VN community while still offering something new to the people that played the fan patch. Seems like a no-brainer, best of both worlds scenario to me but I assume there must have been some licensing issue with getting the gold version (or they are thinking like a traditional game company and plan on releasing that version at a later date in an attempt to get people to double dip).

Edited October 28, 2017 by Xilium

[Akshay]

18 minutes ago, Xilium said:

As far as the Eiyuu Senki situation, the bigger surprise to me was that they didn't just go with the Gold edition of the game. That way, they could have benefited from having a recognizable name among the VN community while still offering something new to the people that played the fan patch. Seems like a no-brainer, best of both worlds scenario to me but I assume there must have been some licensing issue with getting the gold version (or they are thinking like a traditional game company and plan on releasing that version at a later date in an attempt to get people to double dip).

I would have have loved to see gold.

However The original is already translated. Im sure that made retranslation far far easier. They probably did not translate the whole thing blindly from scratch.

[Nandemonai]

4 hours ago, Infernoplex said:

Speaking of JAST ... My vague memory from earlier this year tells me they promised Flowers Summer (forgot the full name of Flowers sequel) by the end of this year or something like that, right? What happened with that? xD

Actually, I was convinced they had.  But reading this announcement closely, I don't think that's right anymore.  Here's what they actually said.  They gave it a "Winter 2017" window.  Except because "Winter 2017" runs from 12/21/2017 to 3/20/2018, realistically, they're releasing sometime in the first quarter of 2018.  (I very much doubt they'll be shipping the game out over Christmas, after all.)

Edited October 28, 2017 by Nandemonai

[Infernoplex]

14 hours ago, Nandemonai said:

Actually, I was convinced they had.  But reading this announcement closely, I don't think that's right anymore.  Here's what they actually said.  They gave it a "Winter 2017" window.  Except because "Winter 2017" runs from 12/21/2017 to 3/20/2018, realistically, they're releasing sometime in the first quarter of 2018.  (I very much doubt they'll be shipping the game out over Christmas, after all.)

Ah, indeed, you do have a point there, I didn't think about it at that time in that way. Welp, in that case, it seems JAST is finally becoming more serious. Or at least more serious than they were before (even if only just a slightly bit xD). Since they redesigned their website, they seemed to be sort of more active. I think that's a good sign, looks promising, I hope they keep it up like this, maybe they finally become really active.